“For the first time since the Great Depression both advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies are in recession. The Great Lockdown is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis [of 2008].
The United States is expected to decline to roughly -6 percent growth, as are other nations in the advanced economy group. The IMF said more than 90 of its 189 member states have requested financial support.
We’re projecting for economic activity to still be below pre-virus levels in 2021. This is a deep recession that involves insolvency issues and unemployment rates going up dramatically.”
See Also: Goldman Sachs Says Economies Will Shrink 35% as Gold Hits 7-Year High
“The World Bank listed distributed ledger technology (DLT), stablecoins, CBDCs and payment tokenization systems, placing them in line with other fintechs like big data analytics and cloud computing.
Specifically, the report says that DLT ‘may further spur business model innovation in cross-border payments,’ noting that the technology has a potential to streamline such payments in a permissioned, i.e. private, environment.”
See Also: G20 Watchdog Warns Nations to Mitigate Risks Posed by Libra-Like Stablecoins
“China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) published a list Sunday of the 71 companies and public entities that have joined its committee. The group was formed to discuss and set industry standards for distributed ledger technology.
Inviting a wide range of industries onto the committee may be a nod to a speech Premier Xi Jinping made in October in which he said China must “seize the opportunity” and drive technological innovation across all sectors using blockchain technology.
It’s possible the standards agreed by the blockchain committee could influence regulators and industry bodies from other countries.“
“The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), one of the nation’s four state-owned banking giants, is trialing a test interface for the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Screenshots show the banking giant has already developed a front-end interface of how users could potentially interact with China’s CBDC. The move hints at the acceleration of the development and deployment work of rolling out the DE/CP.”
“A borrower must lock up his BTC collateral in a special multi-signature contract on the Bitcoin blockchain. Smart contracts on Ethereum then read that data and provide the loan through stablecoins. The minimum collateralization requirement is set at 140%.
Like many cross-chain solutions working on Bitcoin, there is an element of trust involved.
There’s two main points of trust within the system. One is oracles and the other is an arbiter on the Bitcoin side. […] Essentially [the arbiters] sign along with the lender in order to move Bitcoin from its current location to the atomic swap contract.“
“The integration allows DOT holders to keep their tokens in offline Coinbase Custody vaults and stake them through Bison Trails validators.
Bison Trails and Coinbase Custody plan to add staking service for other blockchains over time. Polkadot’s mainnet has not yet launched.”
“London-based crypto payment processor Wirex has revealed that it now has over 3 million active users, highlighting the popularity of its crypto-supporting visa card among customers. MakerDAO’s Dai stablecoin, which Wirex has supported since February 2019, has been increasingly popular with users, Matveev noted.
Wirex allows crypto users to spend their crypto and fiat currencies using a dedicated Visa card and mobile app. The service has been rolled out in 130 countries, with the card accepted at over 46 million locations.”
“A new class-action lawsuit against DeFi giant the Maker Foundation alleges that the company misrepresented the risks investors in the ecosystem faced, leading to catastrophic losses of collateral.
The complaint, which was filed in the Northern District Court of California on April 14, accuses three entities affiliated with Maker of negligence and intentional misrepresentation. The complaint asks for a minimum of $8.325 million in compensation and $20 million in punitive damages.”
“Dapper’s Flow blockchain will adopt Libra’s Move as it’s virtual machine (VM), while Libra will utilize Dapper’s smart contract programming language Cadence in a technology-sharing partnership.
Move was the first resource-oriented programming language, but it is designed for performance rather than readability and ease-of-use. Cadence, on the other hand, was designed for usability first, with syntax inspired by Swift and Rust.“
“John McAfee has announced that he is working on a privacy coin called Ghost. McAfee tweeted that Ghost will be underpinned by a Proof-of-Stake algorithm, and will be tradable against leading cryptocurrencies via atomic swaps on the McAfeeDex decentralized exchange.
With a DEX/privacy coin combo we now have full control of our finances!”
The Disrupt 